


Metamorphosis

by Naraht



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 09:03:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2185800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I could apply for surgical posts in all the London hospitals</i>, she thought. <i>I wouldn't even have to change my name.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Trope Bingo 2014 for the "genderswap" square.

Hilary woke up one morning and discovered that she had turned into a man. 

It must have been a dream; it could hardly have been otherwise. For this reason she felt no alarm, only a mild, faintly giddy curiosity.

She studied herself - himself? - in the mirror, noting the beginnings of morning stubble and the reddish tinge to her hair that was somehow more noticeable on a man. For a moment she imagined that she saw the face of her beloved second brother, whom war had robbed of the chance to grow into full manhood. But there was something in the faint lines of amusement around the eyes that was distinctively Hilary Mansell, whether written in the masculine or the feminine gender. And yet she looked, she thought, five years younger as a man, with a sense of power still held in reserve.

Hilary stretched her hands experimentally, noticing their greater span and the movements of the muscles and tendons under the skin. She had never been able to look at her own hands these last years without imagining them holding a scalpel; now, gallingly, it was much easier to do so.

 _I could apply for surgical posts in all the London hospitals_ , she thought. The ambition had awoken in her so suddenly that it seemed to come from the body entirely, nothing to do with her. _No one would question a man having spent a year or two in general practice. They would give me interviews, I never did have trouble getting interviews. I wouldn't even have to change my name. And then, and then..._

She was almost crushed to remember that it was all a dream. A moment later she wondered what she would do if it wasn't. Clearly, she concluded, the only sensible course of action would be to proceed on that basis.

It was a matter of some luck that she had the morning free of house calls; after that she was expecting Julian to lunch.

It was the first time that she had thought of him since her transformation; with fascination she felt her new body responding to the prospect. She started to laugh and then cut herself short, arrested by the deep, ironic chuckle that had bubbled up from her expanded rib cage.

Instead, after a quick glance at the clock, she drew a sheet of paper towards her and began to write.

_Dear Julian,_

_Have you read Kafka? I may be mad, or dreaming, but it seems I have had my own metamorphosis. I will be waiting for you upstairs. I wanted to prepare you first._

_Hilary_

She left the note on the table in her sitting room, next to a vase of flowers that he had brought on his previous visit. He would look there, she hoped, when he found her absent.

In the intervening hours she paced the small compass of her bedroom, crossing it quickly with her lengthened strides. She hardly dared to go out, lest she met someone who recognised her - or perhaps, lest she met someone who did not recognise her. Hilary hardly knew which to fear more.

She heard the turning of the handle of the garden door a few minutes before she expected it. Footsteps and then a long pause. Her heart, she realised distantly, was pounding. She wondered whether he might read the note and go away again. But then she heard his steps on the stairs and stood, preparing herself for whatever might come.

Julian came quickly into the bedroom, then stopped and stared at her with all the expressiveness of which his face was capable. "Darling, is it you?"

"It's me," said Hilary. She hardly believed her own words, uttered as they were in her new baritone compass.

"Oh, thank God," Julian replied. The relief in his voice was obvious and utterly unexpected. "From your note I hardly knew what to think. I wondered whether you might have been turned into a cockroach."

"My dear boy, don't be absurd."

Hilary held her arms out to him, instinctively ready to draw him into a reassuring embrace. She stopped short at the sight of her own hands, with a light sprinkling of reddish hairs on the backs. They had seemed so suited for surgery. Now she was conscious, as she had not been before, of the terrible wrongness of her body when set against Julian's. She let her arms fall back to her sides.

Julian gazed at her with an expression that fell little short of betrayal.

"Do you not..." he began, faltering. He swallowed. "Now, because of this... does it mean that you don't...?"

"Of course it doesn't." The words escaped her before she could think what they meant. "I'm still me."

"I know," replied Julian softly.

"But, come to that, my dear, surely for you it's not at all the same..."

"Do you think that it makes the slightest bit of difference to me?" asked Julian, incredulous. "Do you think that it could? Perhaps if you _had_ been turned into a cockroach - but even then, it wouldn't have mattered. I would only have needed time to adjust."

"How does one adjust to something like that?" asked Hilary, enchanted.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I was wondering, downstairs. But I would have managed somehow. After all, I love you; that couldn't ever change."

Julian, she realised, believed every word he said. And, after all her doubts, she found that she believed him too. "Come here, my sweet."

He obeyed immediately, beginning to kiss and embrace her with that careless, masculine strength of his. With a sense of triumph Hilary realised that it was now impossible to tell which of them was the stronger.

 _I'll go to London,_ she thought.


End file.
